429, HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
tors are subject to. He finds a public need for a fixed boundary 
for the extension of such right, and that one had been established 
by harbor lines outside of which no private wharf might extend. 
He finds that Alger’s wharf, by an extension built after the law was 
enacted, passed this line, and that he, therefore, incurred the pen- 
alty provided, although there was no interference with the actual 
use of the public right of way, nothing beyond simply getting 
outside the line and so violating the law. 
The decision is, therefore, an emphatic vindication of public 
authority as authority, and against rights of property asserted un- 
der the Massachusetts constitution. ‘The commanding reputation 
of Chief Justice Shaw, as well as that of the court over which he 
presided, with the thoroughness of his discussion of the principles 
involved, the clearness with which he perceived what it was that 
he was adding to the English precedents on the same subject, have 
made this, perhaps, the most distinctly leading case in all the dis- 
cussions of the relation of the police power to the state constitu- 
tions. It comes first under that heading in Prof. Thayer’s Cases on 
Constitutional Law. It is the one quoted from by Judge Cooley 
for his definition in the chapter on this subject in his Constitu- 
tional Limitations. It figures on page 1 of Prentice’s Police Pow- 
ers. That the common law precedents relating to exercise of 
power by executive officials and subordinate municipal bodies must 
inevitably have their doctrines widened when applied to the sov- 
ereign legislature was a foregone conclusion. That Chief Justice 
Shaw was there to do it, and do it in old Massachusetts, may be 
fairly termed another example of what Bancroft considered the 
care of Providence for the Great Republic. It furnished a dis- 
tinct foundation for the general doctrine, previously to that time 
somewhat unconsciously applied, that the sweeping provisions of 
the constitutions, even where their broad terms seemed contrary to 
the principles of the common law and to narrow greatly the field 
of legislation as compared with that occupied by the British Parlia. 
ment, were made not in opposition to but in forgetfulness of those 
principles and were not to be given such an effect. 
The sound sense of both courts and public established that the 
property rights which the constitution sanctify are, as Judge Shaw 
declared, held subject to the controlling power of the legislature. 
No mere implication from general statements of the doctrine of 
personal rights was allowed to seriously impair the law-making 
